


The Bloodsucking Brownie Extermination

by lessthanpie



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lessthanpie/pseuds/lessthanpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy's apartment building has an infestation that only a Middleman can clear out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bloodsucking Brownie Extermination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tiriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiriel/gifts).



**The illegal sublet Wendy shares with another young, photogenic artist. 1:35 p.m.**

Lacey only wore the yellow teddy costume when she really, really had to. It wasn't something to be abused or wasted. She was wondering if maybe she had made an error in judgement this time, though, because it wasn't working at all. She took off her head just as Wendy came in the door.

"What is that all over you, Dub Dub?" she asked. "I hope it's not the squashed remains of another giant bug."

"No. It's... not a bug." Wendy didn't want to explain that it was actually bits of demon. She was pretty sure it wasn't even a _vegan_ demon; it had been trying to eat her, after all. "Do you need me to come back later? I really need a shower, but I see that the bear is out."

Lacey sighed. "No. It's not working anyway."

"Is there anything I can do?" Wendy knew that a bear suit failure was something to be concerned about.

"I don't think so. I'm just not feeling very creative today." Lacey frowned, because she _always_ felt creative, about everything. She couldn't remember a time when she didn't.

"Bummer," said Wendy, too concerned at the moment about how awful the demon bits were starting to smell to pay too much attention to Lacey's very serious problem.

**Later.**

The sound of Wendy's watch woke her up, but it took the pounding on the door to actually get her out of bed. She found Lacey in the living room, seeming not to notice any of the noise. "What's up, Lace?" she said on her way to see who was there.

"Nothing," answered Lacey, her voice unusually flat.

"Nothing? But it's the second Thursday of the month. I thought that was Protest Something New Day."

"It is. I'm just having a hard time thinking of something new to protest."

Wendy paused, her hand on the doorknob. "Wow. Has this ever happened to you before?"

"Nope."

Wendy opened the door to find the Middleman standing there, tapping his foot on the floor as he looked pointedly at his own blaring watch. "Were this a drill, Dubbie, you would have failed at answering the door in a timely fashion."

"Sorry," she answered, still distracted by Lacey's obvious distress. "I'll be ready to go in a minute. Come on in."

Wendy went up to her room to find her shoes, against her better judgment leaving her roommate and boss alone in the same room.

"Hey, Wendy's Boss." Lacey had long since changed out of her bear suit, but she couldn't stop staring at it, as though she might be able to figure out what was wrong with it. It looked the same as always; maybe she had been the one to change. She scratched her arm absently, and realized that she must have been bitten by the mother of all mosquitoes.

"Great balls of fire! What's that on your arm?" exclaimed Sexy Bossman.

"Just a mosquito bite." answered Lacey.

"Big mosquito, or regular mosquito with a big mouth?" he asked

"I don't know. I didn't see it."

"Let me see your arm."

"It's just a mosquito bite." Lacey looked up at Wendy's boss, mesmerized by his pillow lips and his touch on her arm.

"Strange mosquito," said Sexy Bossman. "They don't usually leave actual teeth marks."

"Huh," said Lacey, looking down at her own arm. "I hadn't really noticed. It kind of looks like people teeth marks, but that's silly. Nobody is that small, right?" She gave a tiny laugh. "Like I was telling Wendy. Mutant mosquitoes."

"Indeed," said the Middleman, dropping Lacey's arm when Wendy came back down the stairs. "Good day to you, Lacey," he said, in his usual formal tone. He considered adding a hat to his Middle Suit, just so he'd have one to tip at the lady.

Out in the hallway, they came across Noser.

"Hey, Noser."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Noser."

"Wendy. Wendy's boss." His usual lyric filled greeting was conspicuous in its absence.

"Not saying it with a song today, Mr. Noser?" asked the Middleman.

"The music has left my soul," sighed Noser.

"Where'd it go?" Wendy asked, expecting some kind of emo band lyric in response.

"I don't know." Such a prosaic answer from Noser made Wendy raise an eyebrow, but there was no time to deal with it now.

Once in the elevator, Wendy turned to her boss and asked, "So, what's the big emergency?"

"Never mind that now, Dubbie. We have bigger fish to fry. Or should I say smaller fish? Of course, they're not actually fish at all. That would be weird."

"I think we've already bypassed 'weird' and are well on our way into the land of confusion."

"Have you noticed anything different about Lacey? Does she seem... uninspired?"

"Yeah, actually, now that you mention it. Why?" The question of why he was noticing could wait until it was something she wanted to think about at all; never would be a good time.

"Because I believe she has been bitten by a brownie, and it's sucked out her creativity. And if I'm not mistaken, young Noser has been a victim as well."

"Baked goods bite back?"

"No time for alliteration, Dubby. This building is full of artists, is it not? Clearly, it is a target rich environment for these flying faeries of inspiration ingestion."

"I thought there was no time for alliteration. Are you saying something has literally sucked the mojo out of Lacey and Noser?"

"Exactly. And we need to take out the nest before the infestation spreads." He suddenly smacked the back of his own neck. "And you're going to be on your own in figuring out a solution, because I am about to lose my creative problem solving skills." He held out his hand, displaying the mangled remains of what was definitely not a mosquito.

"Ew," said Wendy succinctly. "Looks like Tinkerbell."

"Dubbie, tell Ida it's a Code Thirty Two. She'll know what to do. I'll stay here and try to keep the contamination to a minimum."

"Too late." They suddenly found themselves in a swarm of small winged beings that seemed very hungry. Wendy pulled her jacket over her head to protect her exposed skin and tried to remember Sensei Ping's advice for dealing with things like this, in the absence of a fly swatter.

"There's one thing you have to ask yourself in a situation like this, Dubbie."

"What's that, Boss?"

"What does it mean when a vampire offers you soup?"

Though this moment when she was covered with tiny biting fairies was not the moment she would have chosen for a pop quiz, she couldn't avoid taking a moment to really think through the question. "That the unemployed actor taking your lunch order is also an unemployed vampire?"

"Exactly."

"Huh." She hadn't really expected that to be correct. "And how exactly is that helpful in this kind of situation?"

"Well, these aren't vampires."

"I can see that." Vampires, even in Wendy's still limited experience, did not have wings. And even though the only ones she had actually come in contact with had been hypnotic, marriage crazed puppets, they were a lot closer to what she expected of something that would call themselves "vampire". "Vampires are taller."

"Not always. These, however, are your simple, run of the mill, flesh eating faeries whose bites have the side effect of consuming the victim's higher thinking skills."

"Not that I don't appreciate the teaching moment here, Boss, but they're getting close to gnawing through my clothes."

"Go, Dubby." The Middleman dropped to the ground and rolled, squishing all the faeries clinging to him and sending the rest flying off to wherever their nest was.

"_Ew_," Wendy commented again, before she took off to get help.

**Middleman HQ**

"Put down the quote unquote hooka, Caterpillar," said Ida.

Wendy didn't even blink at the accusations of drug use anymore. "What?"

"You know these faeries aren't just a drug induced figment of your imagination, right?"

"Yeah, I got that when they drew blood from my friends."

"Hard to believe they're not flying themselves into walls all on their own now, isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Wendy dryly. "What do we do about them."

"Call the exterminator. Duh."

"Of course. Should I check the white pages or the yellow ones for 'faery exterminators'?"

"Neither, ganja girl. This kind of thing calls for the purple pages."

"The purple pages?"

"The purple pages." Ida paused. "Have we gone over that enough times to get through the smoky haze of your mind?"

Wendy didn't dignify that with a response. "I haven't tripped over any purple pages left at my front door, nor have I ever seen my roommate protest against the wastefulness of them when everything is available on the internet now."

"That's because you don't live in the O2STK delivery zone." Ida reached up and pulled a thick purple volume off the shelf. "Fabulous... face...," she muttered, reading aloud down the page. "There. Faery extermination. Joe Rupert, certified." She stopped and glanced up at Wendy. "You getting this, Bob Marley?"

"Yeah, I got it. Faery exterminator. Is there a phone number or what?" She had her dialing finger at the ready.

Ida didn't answer. Her eyes darted back and forth as though she was watching a tennis match at ludicrous speed. "Phone number," she snorted. "Move into the future, hippy. We order things online now. He'll be there in an hour, or we get a free jabberwok removal on credit. He should be able to help your smoking buddies."

"And the Head Cheese," she reminded Ida, checking her weapon before heading out the door to go meet the exterminator. She wanted to be prepared for anything.

**Lobby of the illegal sublet Wendy shares with another young, photogenic artist.**

"Are you the, uh, exterminator?" Wendy asked the strangely dressed man who walked in, five minutes past the guaranteed time. "I hope your tardiness isn't an indication of shoddy work. At least someone sounds like the Bossman," she muttered to herself.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of your little problem. Get it? 'Little'. Ha!"

"Ha," said Wendy without a hint of actual amusement. "How about you just hilariously get rid of these flying overzealous art critics?"

She guided him toward the heating duct that seemed to house the nest, and stood back to let the professional get to work. It wasn't like any kind of extermination she'd ever seen before, but she gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. She'd never seen a faery extermination before, after all.

She got kind of worried when they started to swarm, though. "Uh, dude? You okay over there?"

"More than okay." He turned toward her, the brownies fluttering around him with no apparent inclination to bite him.

Wendy began to suspect foul play. "What's up with the faery-nado?"

He looked up from his admiration of the small creatures. "What?"

"A tornado made of faeries. Why aren't they biting you?"

"My babies would never bite me."

"Your _babies_? How... You know what, never mind. I don't want to know. How do we get rid of them?"

"Why would I want to get rid of them? They're beautiful. I've been breeding them for years and now they're perfectly equipped to bring my plan to fruition. Once they've drained all the creativity from all the unwashed artists in this building and they've all been evicted, I can buy it for a song, and resell it for a huge profit."

"That's your evil plan? Real estate?"

"Sheer elegance in its simplicity, isn't it?"

"Yeah, 'simple' is one word for it. Prepare to reap the whirlwind, Donald Trump."

She hadn't really expected the weapon she'd brought to be quite this useful, but the industrial strength fly swatter was impressively effective; she was able to take out half of the tiny pests before she even started the Tiny Terror Takedown maneuver that finished off the exterminator.

"You think of yourself as The Exterminator with capital letters, don't you?" she said, checking her knots to make sure he'd stay put until he could be hauled out to the Middlemobile.

"Maybe." Defeated self-identifying super villains always pouted.

"Nice job, Dubbie," said the Boss, emerging from the elevator. "With the nest destroyed, everyone should be back to normal as soon as the venom wears off. Lacey and Noser should be back to their Bohemian selves shortly."

"And you?"

"And me. But probably not this guy," he said, pulling the bound villain to his feet. "He's been sitting in the remains of his living tools of destruction long enough that he'll never come up with another dastardly plan."

As they headed out to the Middlemobile, Wendy almost asked how her boss and roommate had filled the time while she'd been working on their rescue, but she decided that she really didn't want to know. At least she knew they couldn't have been too creative.


End file.
